


the tears i cried for you

by CadenceH2O



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, F/M, Gen, M/M, Unrequited, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 00:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30013653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CadenceH2O/pseuds/CadenceH2O
Summary: if you wanted love— well, you needed to be brave enough to take the risk, and you needed to be strong enough to face the consequences of rejection.unfortunately, oikawa was neither.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Kudos: 10





	the tears i cried for you

**Author's Note:**

> Definition of Star Tears Disease from [Urban Dictionary](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Star%20Tear%20Disease):
> 
> ━━━━━━━
> 
> The Star Tear disease is a fictional illness similar and inspired to the Hanahaki disease.
> 
> It's not deadly but cannot be cured.  
> It was created from
> 
> The illness born from subjects of unrequited love in which the patient start to cry coloured tears similar to stars; hence the name. Along with the coloured tears, often there is a crystalline sound or similar noises when a tear shatters on a solid plan.
> 
> The disease affects the victim eyes, making them turn colour blind and, in rare cases, make the victim lose sight.
> 
> The illness would disappear if the victim get their feeling required romantically and not in matter of friendship. Although the damages already done won't disappear.
> 
> ━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━༓☾☆☽༓━━━━━━━

in a world where unrequited feelings would result in sharp-edged, star-shaped tears, _crushes_ could be deadly. ‘love’ was a fragile topic that people thread around like it was shards of glass— no one was willing to love if it meant putting their sight on the line for it.

reciprocation was considered a miracle, a blessing. if you wanted love— well, you needed to be brave enough to take the risk, and you needed to be strong enough to face the consequences of rejection.

unfortunately, oikawa was neither.

he was neither brave enough to confess, nor strong enough to face the consequences. and yet, he let himself dream.

he let himself hope.

he let himself _love_.

the relationship between a setter and a spiker is an intricate one, they said. oikawa believed the phrase whole-heartedly. there was no relationship more _intricate_ than the one between him and the ace of seijoh— words were never needed between them, not on the court, not during their arguments, not...

despite the telepathic connection that tooru convinced himself that they had— hajime just never got the hint.

_i love you_.

courage? oikawa had none of it. not when it came to facing his denied feelings for his best friend. and honestly, who the hell would want to admit it? it wasn’t as if hajime was showing signs of returning his affection— oikawa wasn’t going to be so stupid as to confess, to bungee jump off a cliff without a rope—

even across the cafeteria, oikawa could clearly make out what the girl was saying.

“ _i... i like you. could— can you be my boyfriend_?” words couldn’t express how much oikawa admired her. confessions took courage. confessions took risk-taking. confessions took putting your sight on the line, because _rejection meant star-shaped tears_.

tooru thought he knew pain. afterall, it seemed that _fate_ had hated him from the moment he was born, so _pain_ had always been the feeling he knew best.

but the pain of defeat, the pain of _not-being-good-enough_ , the pain of never achieving his dreams was nothing compared to the agony that shot through his chest like an arrow when his eyes traced the outline of hajime’s words, along with the slight tint of a smile and the shy red flag of a blush.

“ _sure_.”

━━━━━━━༓☾☆☽༓━━━━━━━

_don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t—_

a drop of blood dribbled down from his lips, vermillion against the pale hue of his skin. along with the red droplet came a crystalline, star-shaped structure smaller than the nail of tooru’s pinkie.

_a tear_.

he caught it before it shattered into a million, minuscule pieces across his bedroom floor, cradling the tiny glass-like structure in his hands. a bitter curiosity was set alight in his eyes as he inspected the tear— in all honestly, he would have found it beautiful if it wasn’t for that fact that too many of the tears would _end_ his volleyball career.

before he knew it, three more tears fell. and after that, another five. and ten. then twenty, and countless more. a string of crystalline structures grazed his skin after they pierced his eyes like a thousand ice needles, dropping onto his palm and some shattering on the floor, a cacophony of tiny little xylophones making contact with the ground.

in the midst of pain and bitterness, tooru came to a life-changing realisation. one that made a small part of him bite back angrily, _i told you so._

_he was heartbroken._

angrily, he shook the sorrow away, blinking back the sting in his eyes. a sting that he was sure he’d feel again, and when he did, the intensity was going get worse and worse until it met the end of his sight.

the clinking of the crystal-like tears was strangely satisfying, tooru thought as he gently placed them, one by one, into a glass jar. when he was finished, he shook the jar gently, relishing in the chime-like _tinks_ of tears darting across the smooth base of the glass.

his eyes, now in lesser pain than before, flicked over to a framed photo he had on his desk— one of him and hajime, both at an age where _crushes_ were silly and laughable things. their arms were over each others’ shoulders, and even though their faces were scratched and bathed in mud, they were both grinning, happy and without a care in the world.

if only he could go back to a time when hajime was just a _friend_.

━━━━━━━༓☾☆☽༓━━━━━━━

if you asked him to pinpoint the exact time that he started to avoid hajime, tooru wouldn’t be able to give you an answer. it started off subtle— mentioning that he had to rush home to help his mom with some chores, having to head to school earlier to finish some homework he left under his desk— all meaningless, instinctive lies that slipped from his lips without a second thought. if hajime found them suspicious, he didn’t say anything, too preoccupied with walking his new girlfriend to school. well, it was for the better— oikawa didn’t know how he would feel if he had to walk with _both_ hajime _and_ his girlfriend to school.

but eventually, it became more and more obvious that tooru was doing his best to cut his best friend out of his life— as much as he could, anyway. he hadn’t cried since the first time, and he would very much like to keep it that way. the amount of crystalline tears in the jar had not increased, and he preferred it like that.

“hey, what’s wrong?” iwaizumi confronted him, at long last, as they were shedding sweat-soaked shirts in the locker room. unintentionally, the setter flinched away from his touch, hajime’s hand retracting back in surprise, retreating from its’ former position on the setter’s shoulder.

“what do you mean what’s wrong?” oikawa answered with a laugh, anxiety boiling under the facade of a flirtatious attitude. “i’m as fine as a dandy, iwa-chan. what, are you worried about me?”

silence vibrated through the locker room as the other players shared nervous looks— tooru’s avoidance of his ace had been pretty obvious to everyone else, it was just that no one wanted to speak up. the pair typically resolved their problems sooner or later, except that it had been _three months_.

“yes.” the ace replied, staring into oikawa’s eyes with an expression that the latter couldn’t quite decipher, “i am.”

they left the conversation at that, for which oikawa was relieved. hajime never pushed anymore from then onwards, but there always seemed to be something that he wanted to say but left unsaid. words became abundant, and while that worked for them before, tooru _wasn’t_ heartbroken before.

thoughts used to fill the space in between them— just by glancing at the impatient tapping of oikawa’s fingers, hajime could tell that his best friend was hungry for milk bread— but times changed, and so did oikawa. the setter became _unreadable_ , and with no words to cue him, the ace lost track of his best friend’s thoughts, and somewhere along the line, he lost track of his best friend, too.

━━━━━━━༓☾☆☽༓━━━━━━━

“tooru, there you are!” tooru’s mother chastised with a frown. “where were you? hajime’s been waiting for you upstairs for at least fifteen minutes. i thought the two of you walked back together?”

the brown-haired teen froze in his footsteps, hand still held mid-air, fingers outstretched to slip off his shoes. “he’s... upstairs?” tooru whispered in horror. he could only think of one thing, displayed in all its’ disgraceful glory, sitting on his desk, right next to his laptop—

_the jar_.

“it’s not what it—!” the door to tooru’s room slammed open, the setter meeting his best friend’s eyes as the latter looked up, jar held in hand like a precious artefact, a fragile, priceless object that had to be treated with utmost care.

“it’s not what it looks like?” hajime’s voice was soft, softer than tooru thought achievable by the normally-loud ace. an essence of betrayal, of _hurt_ , of _guilt_ — of all things— howled from inside his tone, and still hajime kept his composure, waiting, patient for the setter’s reply.

more than before, silence sat in the space between them, the wordless understanding that they used to have a distant memory belonging to the past. neither said a word; neither _wanted_ to. quietly, hajime set the jar back onto the table, where it had been before the ace stepped into the setter’s room uninvited.

“why didn’t you say anything?” hajime asked quietly.

the setter swallowed, willing himself not to cry— at least not in front of hajime, “you looked happy. _she_ looked happy.”

“and so you let yourself suffer?” a raging storm of emotions were coursing through the ace’s eyes, his fury rising on behalf of his best friend. “why the hell would you do that?”

oikawa looked into his best friend’s eyes, a sudden swoll of courage taking him by storm, dragging him down like the undercurrent of a tsunami. “because I love you,” he said softly, still looking into hajime’s eyes to meet quietened winds. “that’s why.”

━━━━━━━༓☾☆☽༓━━━━━━━

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve thought about this one for a while and finally got to writing it at 12.15am and yes its’ midnight but oh hell apparently i produce better work when everyone else’s asleep so oops 
> 
> tumblr: cadenceh2o  
> twitter: cadenceh2o


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